Romans 10:9-11 – That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”

Jesus is Lord – That is a confession many of us have made. That is the confession and the Belief that we are praying for every week at our church. We are praying for awakening. We want God to bring an awakening of belief to the people He draws to our church this weekend.

But to pray for God to do that in our church, we need to understand it. I remember the first time I heard someone teach on the cultural context of “Jesus is Lord.” I learned that Roman citizens in New Testament days would declare their allegance to Rome by declaring that “Ceasar is Lord.” Or they would declare loyalty to Roman god’s and goddesses by saying that they were Lord. Christians in this time period who were subjected to Roman rule were being killed because they would not confess that Ceasar was Lord. The first time I heard that historical context behind this passage, it strengthened my faith. It was challenging and empowering to understand that Christians were willing to suffer and die because of their faith that Jesus was Lord.

The more that I have studied this passage and the context behind it, I have come to realize that they weren’t getting killed for just saying Jesus was Lord. They were suffering and getting killed for not adding Jesus to the list of other gods that were acceptable to worship. They were getting killed for not worshiping “Jesus and…”

I read this devotional from Henry and Richard Blackaby this week. Powerful truth!

Truth is a Person

And they came to Him and awoke Him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” Then He arose and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water. And they ceased, and there was a calm. But He said to them, “Where is your faith?” (Luke 8:24-25)

Truth is a Person, not a concept. Jesus said He was the Truth (John 14:6). That means that you can never know the truth of your circumstances unless you have first heard from Jesus. The disciples thought they were perishing in the storm. They were fishermen who knew the sea and knew what their condition was. They had allowed their circumstances to convince them that the “truth” was their imminent death. But they were wrong. Truth was asleep in the back of their boat!

How do we truly forgive someone that has hurt us? Mark Batterson has some great insight on that question here.

The Cure All

It’s so hard not to harbor bitterness. It’s so hard not to hang on to unforgiveness. It’s so hard to offer the same kind of grace that we’ve received from God. But it is the only cure, the cure all. How do you let go and let God?

Jesus is coming back. I don’t know if that has been something you have thought about this week, but it is true. One of the main topics we get questions about at our church is the End Times, and what the Bible has to say about the return of Christ.

What does it mean to be holy? That is a word that we see often in scripture. We sing songs to God praising Him for His holiness, but often times we don’t stop to think about what holiness is. The word holy means to be without sin. God is holy, He is perfect, He is sinless.